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I had a couple of REALLY overripe bananas the other day NEEDING to be used or chucked. You know, the kind so brown they are mushy in your hand? I didn’t really want to waste them, but I’m sick of making banana bread whenever I do this. So I decided to look for a recipe which combined my bananas with maple syrup instead. I really want to start cooking with maple syrup and honey, since it’s so plentiful around here.

This recipe did the trick.

Maple Banana Muffins

(12 servings)

1/2 cup butter, melted

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 egg

2 ripe bananas

1/2 teaspoon maple extract (I used vanilla)

3 tablespoons milk

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup chopped walnuts (I had an open bag of pecans, which worked really well)

3 Tbsp sugar (I left this out)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and maple syrup. Beat in the egg and bananas, leaving a few small chunks. Stir in the maple (vanilla) extract and milk. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and baking powder, and stir into the banana mixture just until moistened. Pour into muffin liners. Mix the nuts and sugar, and sprinkle evenly over the batter.

Bake 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

A few notes. The muffins were sweet, but could have been sweeter, which means I could have used another 1/4 cup of maple syrup in there. It was odd not using any sugar, but strangely satisfying.

Instead of regular sugar, I used the maple sugar we bought last winter from the sugarhouse in Berlin, NY. I sprinkled it on top of the muffin cups before baking. Yum!

Our bounty from the sugar house

These muffins were well-done at 30 minutes! No way did they need 50 minutes!